365 Project – Day 12 – The Sockless Gene

My daughter is in the middle of a sock strike. Hate is not even a strong enough word to describe her aversion to socks. She hates, loathes, abhors them. We’ve never been able to keep a pair of socks on her, even when she was just a few weeks old.

Back then, you could never quite catch her taking them off. Like all newborns, she followed a very predicatble schedule of sleeping, eating, pooping, and making jerking, uncoordinated movements with her head and limbs. Yet somehow, she could still manage to covertly remove her socks. We don’t know how she did it. We would turn our heads for a split second, and then next thing we knew, one of Cadence’s socks would be lying next to her, while the other would be tossed halfway across the room or stuffed between the couch cushions.

An accomplice perhaps? Electra makes an unlikely candidate for such a ruse.

Was Cadence pretending to be a helpless, uncoordinated infant?

Telekenesis?

Was she using the Force?

Sock fairies?

We may never know for sure.

These days, however, there is no mystery to how she gets the job done. Countdown from five from the moment we put the socks on her feet.

Five…

Cadence reaches down and grasps the toes of her left foot firmly.

Four…

She pulls, stretching the sock longer and longer, working it slowly down her chubby leg.

Three…

The sock is yanked off with a flourish, and Cadence stares at it for a moment, smiling in satisfaction.

Two…

Cadence looks at me, pursing her lips and squinting her eyes, her little nose wrinkled in disgust.

One…

She throws the sock into my lap with a delighted “Aaaahhh!” and starts the show all over with the right foot.

I have to admit, after watching Steven pull his socks off in the exact same fashion (minus tossing them in my lap with a victory cry), I’ve given up trying to keep socks on Cadence. Obviously, this is some genetically-coded behavior inherited from her Daddy, and who am I to try and fight nature? Let the two of them go sockless together.